Category Archives for Brain Candy

There’s a fantastic message in this commencement speech. You might want to scroll forward to 2m 57s which is where the real message begins in this commencement speech.

These are definitely words of wisdom and it reminds me of this quote which I have always loved and kept near to me.

“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”

The above quote has been attributed to Calvin Coolidge but I’ve heard conflicting stories on that. Either way, it’s irrelevant. Watch the video and get down to it 🙂

I’ve been an entrepreneur for many years, it’s chaotic, hectic, painful, stressful, fun and rewarding – if I’m lucky I might even make some money at it. That’s where I’m personally at today, and again it’s ok.

After one of those extremely hectic days recently, me and one of my partners decided to grab a drink in the local watering hole where we ran into a local business figurehead who will remain nameless.

It was an interesting exchange since I had met this individual no less than 5 times in past 6 months and was quite quickly forgotten. That’s OK as well 🙂 I’m busier on a daily basis than even I can imagine and spend a significant amount of time awake until 2am or 3am on what I like to call my night shift.

Back to the story. After re-introducing himself the light blub then came on and I was greeted with “Oh yeah, you’re the marketing guy”.

You could call it insecurity (I don’t) but I quickly replied that I’m not specifically a marketing guy, although I do believe marketing in new companies and start-ups as a critical element that is quite often overlooked.

Marketing is business, it’s how you sell your product and how your clients and prospects feel about you. It’s also a way to get the world to know who you are, what you are doing and to create a mindshare with the world-at-large.

It’s business, and it’s critical to the success or failure of any new venture.

Back to the story: apparently (according to our good friend) I was insecure about my abilities. Which I both found amusing and ridiculous at the same time.

So why tell the story?

I do a hell of a lot more in any given day than marketing. I’m working to make all of my ventures succeed just like any other entrepreneur. I’m doing it without investment, all of my companies are (currently) cash flow positive and growing.

I’m happy with that. Marketing is key to the success of all of the ventures, particularly at the early stages. Marketing is also a whole lot more than some perceived bolt-on that happens after you’ve figured out financing, an office, a product, a message and a team.

From day one think about your marketing, how the world will see you, what they say and what they will believe about you and your company.

Even more fundamentally it’s about who are you selling product to, will they purchase it, what are you saying to sell that product and how do we make these companies viable, profitable and long lasting.

Develop your business plan and execute with those elements front of mind. It will make a world of difference much more quickly than you may realize.

Yup. I’m the Marketing Guy. Hell, I’m the Twitter guy as well. I also get coffee, clean the office, don’t take a pay cheque when needed and stay up all night whenever needed. I love it. I’m an entrepreneur and I wouldn’t have it any other way (although my wife and family may sometimes disagree!).

Dušan : youdoneven know how much of an impact you had while you were hanging out down here with us mere mortals.

Can you believe this? Too much awesome.

Background: there’s a challenge course almost ready for the kids at Camp Ruskoka. Ruskoka is a camp for new Canadian arrivals and underpriviledged children to learn leadership, mentorship and life skills – it’s a great place full of amazing people doing great stuff. Counsellor training starts this week and the kids will be using it soon.

Here’s a quick run down of my most recent predictions as of June 2011 in the world of technology and business:

MSFT acquires RIM within 18 months. This makes sense for RIM and for MSFT, both of whom have complementary issues which both can help to solve.

APPL acquires Twitter. More on this.

Twitter is recognized as an infrastructure component rather than a website or application. Similar to email.

Twitter is integrated directly into numerous operating systems but most heavily into Mac OS X.

That’s pretty much it for now. Since this is in part a test of the new quick Tumblog features and specifically figuring out why image posting is borked, you may see further annoying and odd micro-posts.

This is a fantastic look at the real life social network and the online social network. It’s a presentation done by a Google employee and has some very interesting insights. In particular segments and groups of friends and relationships. I’ll be adding thoughts, bullet point and additional info for the post but for the time being here is the presentation.

If you know me then you know I’m the father of 7 month old Jaxson Daniel Nedelko. Since I’ve been a Dad I’m pretty mindful (of alot of things) but I’m pretty watchful for his safety.

He is a little mover, awake and asleep and I want him to always be as safe as possible. That’s why it pisses me off when a company life StorkCraft does a crappy job of handling a safety and recall issue. First they deny there is a problem, then they do issue a recall but don’t put anything in place to properly handle the recall.

Their phone lines are jammed, their website is down and they are only issuing official Press Releases. Well I’m here to officially say screw you StorkCraft. You can be sure I’ll never purchase another one of your products ever again and I definitely hope no one else purchases any of your products.

It’s less about the fact there is a recall. It’s how you handled it, or how you didn’t handle it.

That’s what is really at issue here. You’re a backwards company and don’t deserve the right to be producing products for our children, not with your brutal attitude. Check this piece of lame spin out:

“In the majority of incidents, the cribs were being used with broken parts, parts with pieces missing, parts that were damaged or with modified or homemade parts,” the firm said in a statement.

“In some incidents, the crib was in a state of significant disrepair. In other cases, the consumer had installed the drop-side rail upside down — contrary to the instructions that are glued to the mattress base of each crib. This causes extraordinary stress on the plastic parts that could result in breakage.”

Which is basically saying “no no it’s YOUR fault, not ours” – which is complete and utter bullshit. Your products are clearly not well designed, harm children and your spin is not going to change that. Here some more information on the StorkCraft Crib Recall from Mama Knows

I’m compiling a list of useful resources for Storkcraft News, Storkcraft Parts, company contact information and any additional press releases I run into here. Please comment below if you have additional news and information about the Storkcraft Recall

StorkCraft Recall on YouTube

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtrcHrmx5v4[/youtube]

This brightened up my morning today. I get tons of spam like this but I have yet to have seen one that actually included my real name in the body. A few things about this are very cool:

I never knew I had a relative named Michael Nedelko. It’s even more ironic that my relative has a similar name to mine (my middle name is Michael).

I never knew that my relative worked in West Africa as “Director of Produits petroliers” – although my French is a bit rusty I think that might mean he was the Director of Petroleum Products. Well done!

Sadly, even though I never met my successful relative (the dude was worth over $10M!) the poor guy was the victim of a tragic plane crash. I hardly even knew ya.

Happily, the money is in an estate account! Yippee! The lawyer was kind enough to track me down with all of this pertinent information. Thanks Lawyer person!

Sadly, this is the same old Nigerian email scam. It just seems they get better and better at composing their emails. Undoubtedly some poor schmuck will get a letter like this and send these people $10,000 to get the $10,000,000. But that poor schmuck probably already verified their banking and credit card information through a similar email.

Beware the Nigerian email scams, although if for some reason you’re reasing my blog you would fall for this kind of thing (at least I hope to hell you wouldn’t).

I am Barr. Hudson June, the Attorney at law to Late Mr. Michael Nedelko, a native/national of your country, who used to work as the Director of Produits petroliers (TOTAL BENIN) in Benin Republic West Africa Here in after shall be Referred to as my client..

On the 29th of April 2007, my Client, His wife and their three Children were involved in a plane crash and unfortunately lost their lives. Since then I have made several enquiries to your embassy to locate any of my clients extended relatives but all efforts was just in vain.

After these several unsuccessful attempts, I decided to track his last name over the Internet, to locate any member of his Family hence I contacted you. I have contacted you to assist in repatriating the money left behind by my Client before they get confiscated or declared unserviceable by the bank (BANK OF AFRICA, BENIN REPUBLIC). These huge deposits were lodged particularly, with the “BOA” where the deceased had an account valued at about $10.5 million dollars (Ten Million Five Hundred Thousand United States Dollars).

The Bank has issued me a notice to provide the next of kin or have the account confiscated. Since I have been unsuccessful in Locating the relatives for over Six years. Now I seek your consent to present you as the next of kin of the deceased since you have the same last name so that the proceeds of this account valued at $10.5 million dollars can be paid to you and then you and I can Share the money 50% to you and 50% to me. I will procure all Necessary legal documents that can be used to back up any claim we may make. All I require is your honest cooperation to enable us seeing this deal through.

I guarantee that this will be executed under a legitimate arrangement that will protect you from any breach of the law, but you must also agree not to disclose or pass any information related to this business to any body for security reason and to avoid eye brow, and the way we are going to achieve this is.

I will need the following information from you:

Your Full Name and Address,
Your Age, Occupation and Position,
Your Telephone, Mobile and Fax Number for Communication Purpose.

So today is the 41st anniversary of Prague Spring. Around my house growing up I had heard alot about it in snippets. It became the subject of family gatherings (especially after the adults got into drinking a bit) – to me it is a somewhat distant event that although is a huge part of my family never directly affected me.

So it was interesting that my mother decided to finally write the experience down in first person form. I read it and it made it more real to me and definitely made it make sense to me on a more personal level.